In industrial installations such as oil, gas or chemical installations, there is the need to identify leaks or a leakage in an installation component of the installation and states of the installation component as quickly and reliably as possible in order to be able to take suitable measures to eliminate the leak or leakage or faulty states of the installation component. Here, in the context of the invention, a leak is understood in particular to mean an unsealed, faulty point in a wall of a pipeline, a vessel, etc. A leakage is in particular a loss of the medium transported in the installation component, for example by evaporation or seepage.
Monitoring methods for process parameters which are known from the prior art, such as measurement of the pressure drop, measurement of changes in temperature, detection of developments of steam or smoke arising, in or at the installation components are very complex and are usually sluggish and imprecise in certain environments, in particular outdoors. It is known here to use optical recording units, such as cameras, for example, for monitoring the installation components, which, in particular, are arranged outdoors and which are continuously observed by a user. In addition, the optically detected data of the installation component are combined with data detected by measurement technology relating to pressure drop, changes in temperature and are used for determining a risk region.